Honorable Mention

Communicating Visualizations without Visuals: Investigation of Visualization Alternative Text for People with Visual Impairments

Crescentia Jung, Shubham Mehta, Atharva Kulkarni, Yuhang Zhao, Yea-Seul Kim

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View presentation:2021-10-28T13:30:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2021-10-28T13:30:00Z
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What information should an alternative text include to describe visualizations, and how does that impact people’s understanding of visualizations? In this work, we consolidate existing guidelines and survey current practices. To gain more insight, we interviewed 22 people with visual impairments regarding their experience with visualizations. We found that participants actively try to construct an image of visualizations in their heads and wish to carry out visualization tasks. Informed by the study, we provide a set of recommendations to compose an informative alternative text.
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Direct link to video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JsS1FfH7J8s

Abstract

Alternative text is critical in communicating graphics to people who are blind or have low vision. Especially for graphics that contain rich information, such as visualizations, poorly written or an absence of alternative texts can worsen the information access inequality for people with visual impairments. In this work, we consolidate existing guidelines and survey current practices to inspect to what extent current practices and recommendations are aligned. Then, to gain more insight into what people want in visualization alternative texts, we interviewed 22 people with visual impairments regarding their experience with visualizations and their information needs in alternative texts. The study findings suggest that participants actively try to construct an image of visualizations in their head while listening to alternative texts and wish to carry out visualization tasks (e.g., retrieve specific values) as sighted viewers would. The study also provides ample support for the need to reference the underlying data instead of visual elements to reduce users’ cognitive burden. Informed by the study, we provide a set of recommendations to compose an informative alternative text.